Valdez Is Coming

1971

MGM/United Artists

Produced by Ira Steiner

Directed by Edwin Sherin

Screenplay by Roland Kibbee and David Rayfiel

Based on the novel by Elmore Leonard

When you hear the name Elmore Leonard you might think of the current hit television show “Justified” which is based on a character he created for a couple of novels.   Some of you will know him from “Get Shorty” and “Be Cool” as he wrote the novels those highly popular movies were based on.  But way before then Elmore Leonard really bounced into popularity during the 70’s and 80’s with a bunch of very successful crime novels.  His novel “Rum Punch” was filmed as one of my favorite movies of all time: “Jackie Brown” starring Pam Grier and directed by Quentin Tarantino.  But even more way before then Elmore Leonard got his start back in the 1950’s writing western novels.  Plenty of Mr. Leonard’s westerns have been adapted into some classic movies: “Joe Kidd”“3:10  To Yuma””Hombre””Last Stand At Saber River” But my favorite Elmore Leonard western film stars one of my all time favorite actors: Burt Lancaster in VALDEZ IS COMING.

Bob Valdez (Burt Lancaster) is a Mexican-American sheriff who works the Mexican half of a small town on the Texas/Mexico border.  The Anglo sheriff is away on other business and so Valdez is called in to resolve a dangerous situation.  A black man living with a Mexican woman has been accused of murder by the powerful gunrunner/rancher Frank Tanner (Jon Cypher).  Valdez hopes to negotiate a peaceful settlement to the standoff.  The shack the suspect is holed up in is surrounded by the bigoted white posse who are using the shack for target practice  when Valdez arrives to do his job.  Due to a series of shockingly idiotic misunderstandings Valdez is forced to kill the black man, who turns out to be innocent of the crime.

Wracked by guilt, Valdez seeks to do right by the dead man’s Mexican woman and thinks that it isn’t too much that she be given $100 so that she can move back to the Indian reservation and start a new life.  Valdez first goes to the town’s leading citizens who are of the opinion that since the whole thing was Tanner’s fault; he should put up the money.  But they’re willing to make a deal: if Valdez can get $100 from Tanner, they’ll match it with another $100.  Valdez’s attempts to get the money from Tanner results in him being laughed at, beaten like a dog and humiliated in a truly brutal fashion: he’s tied to a rude wooden cross which he has to carry on his back through the desert.   Valdez gets free and once he gets back home pulls out the dusty footlocker under his bed which holds his most precious possessions.  The uniform he proudly wore as a member of the United States Army when he was renowned as the most dangerous hunter/killer of Apache warriors.  His Sharps buffalo rifle with which he can shoot a man in the eye at a 1000 yards. And his fearsomely large Buntline revolvers.  His old battle skills reawakened, Valdez begins a guerrilla war with Tanner in which he starts killing off Tanner’s hired guns one by one, leaving them alive long enough for them to return to their boss and deliver a chilling message: “Valdez Is Coming”

What makes VALDEZ IS COMING such an interesting western is the racial bigotry theme behind the story.  Blacks and Mexicans are the victims here and Valdez is motivated not so much by personal revenge as you might think.  Although being tied to a cross and being forced to walk through the desert would be more than enough to piss me off, lemme tell you. But Valdez’s motivations are deeper than revenge.  His personal code of justice is outraged.  And he has an overwhelming desire to see that to see men act like men, own up to their mistake, do the right thing and acknowledge the innocent black man and the Mexican woman as human beings.  Or at least as much as can be expected in the Old West where life was cheap and the life of minorities was even cheaper.  What makes it even more interesting is that the posse Tanner puts together to hunt Valdez is primarily made up of Mexicans. Tanner’s own right hand man, El Segundo (Barton Heyman) is a Mexican and a pretty damn dangerous man in his own right who understands what Valdez is trying to do and tries to make his boss understand as well to no avail.

The performances in this are really good. Burt Lancaster plays Valdez with a dangerous understatement that fits the character well.  He goes through the first half of the movie as a shambling, quietly spoken man who has put his wild life and lethal skills behind him and is just trying to do a difficult job the best way he can.  But when they rouse this sleeping giant, oh baby, does he get payback in a big way.  Richard Jordan has a good role as a hired gun who oddly enough is conflicted about the way he feels about Valdez and has to put his feelings about Valdez as a Mexican and as a man in a whole new perspective as the hunt for Valdez becomes increasingly more deadly.  Susan Clark is really good in this movie.  Most of you reading this will probably remember her from the TV show “Webster” and I was surprised at how effective she is as Tanner’s woman.  There’s an interesting subplot with her character as it’s taken as a given by the townspeople that Tanner killed her husband so that he could shack up with her.  Valdez takes her hostage to try and bargain with her life for the $100 and through their time together the truth about that situation is resolved in a surprising way I really didn’t see coming.  Frank Silvera plays Valdez’s best friend and they have a really good scene that says everything that needs to be said about how whites view Mexicans that resonated for me given the current climate in the Unites States about Mexican immigrants and makes you think that maybe this country really hasn’t come so far in our racial views as we like to think.

So should you see VALDEZ IS COMING?  I think you’d enjoy it a whole lot if you’re a western fan like I am.  While it’s not as action packed or as purely entertaining as some of the other westerns Burt Lancaster has made such as “The Scalphunters” “Vera Cruz” or “The Professionals” it is a satisfying horse opera in terms of performances and story.  And, yes, it’s not PC to have an Irishman playing a Mexican but that’s how things were done back then so if you want to see the movie, make your peace with that.   There’s a whole lot more to VALDEZ IS COMING than the good guy simply blowing away the bad guys which is underlined by the ending which is one of the most unusual of any western I know but it so absolutely right that I can’t imagine any other way the movie can have ended.  If your cable/satellite provider carries Turner Classic Movies you can wait for VALDEZ IS COMING to show up there as it seems to be a favorite there of somebody in Programming as they usually run it on a Saturday afternoon and if you’re lucky you’ll find it paired with “The War Wagon” or “The Magnificent Seven”.  But if you don’t want to wait, by all means put it on your Netflix queue.  If you’re looking for a solid western with good performances, fine action sequences and a story that contains a little bit more thought to social issues than you might expect from the genre, VALDEZ IS COMING is my recommendation.

Rated PG-13

90 minutes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mr. Majestyk

1974

MGM/United Artists

Produced by Walter Mirisch

Directed by Richard Fleischer

Written by Elmore Leonard

I don’t think anybody will be surprised when I say that Charles Bronson is one of my favorite actors of the group that I call “Old Time Tough”.  I’m talking about guys like Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Ernest Borgnine, Jim Brown, James Coburn, Steve McQueen, Robert Mitchum, Woody Strode, William Holden, Clint Eastwood, Kirk Douglas, Sean Connery…you know what I’m talking about.  These are guys tough enough to walk through Hell with sticks of TNT in their hip pockets yet cool enough that the dynamite wouldn’t dare blow up on them.  Not like the current crop of pretty boy actors.  I’m sorry, but no matter how you try, you can’t convince me that half of today’s male movie actors can beat up on anybody over the age of nine, let alone the dozens of guys they take on in a movie.

Now Charles Bronson…here’s a guy who actually looks like he can pound the ever-lovin’ piss outta you in a New York minute.  He’s got a face that’s been lived in.  It shows age and experience.  He’s got a voice that sounds like he’s been gargling with whiskey and cigarette butts since puberty.  Charles Bronson radiates quiet menace.  He very rarely raises his voice on screen.  If he’s going to kick your sorry ass he just goes ahead and does it.  Chances are you’ve done something to deserve it.  And in MR. MAJESTYK the bad guys certainly do deserve it.  After all, Bronson goes through most of the movie just trying to mind his business.  But circumstances have other plans for him.

Vince Majestyk (Charles Bronson) is a Colorado watermelon farmer.  After struggling along for a few years he stands to make a massive profit from this year’s crop of melons.  He’s got 160 acres of melons that need picking and by a lucky chance meets with the feisty migrant worker Nancy Chavez (Linda Cristal) who isn’t related to that other Chavez but she has been involved in unionizing migrant workers.

Majestyk isn’t interested in her politics but if she can get a crew to pick his melons he’ll gladly pay them the fair wages she asks for.  However, Majestyk has to run off the small time strong-arm man Bobby Kopas (Paul Koslo) who is trying to force Majestyk to hire his crew of melon pickers that are nothing more than a bunch of Skid Row drunks.  The drunks don’t know how to pick melons and Majestyk knows they’ll ruin one melon for every three they pick.  So what does Majestyk do?  Well, since this is a Charles Bronson movie, he kicks Bobby’s ass and sends his crew packing.  You expected something different, maybe?

Bobby swears out an assault warrant against Majestyk who is promptly jailed by the sardonic Lt. McAllen (Frank Maxwell) who is immune to Majestyk’s pleas that he be allowed two or three days to get his melon crop in.  While in jail, Majestyk gets on the bad side of Mafia hit man Frank Renda (Al Lettieri) Renda’s boys try to break Renda out of jail during a wild shootout that goes horribly wrong and Majestyk sees a chance.  He makes off with Renda and tries to negotiate with Lt. McAllen: drop the charges against me and let me go back to picking melons and I’ll give you Renda.  However, with the help of his girlfriend Wiley (Lee Purcell) Renda escapes and vows vengeance against Majestyk.  After hooking up with Bobby Kopas, Renda scares off Majestyk’s migrant workers, breaks the legs of Majestyk’s best friend Larry (Alejandro Rey) and worst of all, machine guns Majestyk’s melon crop.

Well, he shouldn’t have done that.

You see, Majestyk is a decorated Vietnam veteran who earned a Silver Star and who was also one of the best U.S. Army Ranger instructors and he certainly hasn’t forgotten any of his skills.  He just hasn’t had a chance to use them for a while…

I’m a big fan of 70’s action movies like MR. MAJESTYK because while they lack the pyrotechnical whiz bang of action movies nowadays they have a gritty, down-to-earth look that gives such a realistic feel to the story that you really get sucked into what the story and characters are about and you’re not just waiting for the next big action sequence.  There’s really not anything in MR. MAJESTYK that is outside the realm of possibility.  I attribute that to the terrific screenplay by Elmore Leonard, who may just be the finest crime writer of the late 20^th Century.  The dialog is wonderful to listen to but if you know anything about Elmore Leonard that shouldn’t be a surprise.  Leonard writes dialog where people talk to each other and not at each other.

The performances are great.  Charles Bronson is quietly capable as the enigmatic Vince Majestyk.  He’s just trying to get his melon crop in but all this other stuff keeps getting in the way.  Early on in the movie when he has a run in with some thugs and effortlessly takes away a shotgun from one of them, he says: “You’re in the wrong business” we believe him.  We also believe that Frank Renda doesn’t stand a chance against this man who he calls ‘The Melon Picker’ once we see what Majestyk is capable of when he finally gets sufficiently pissed off.  Al Lettieri obviously has a marvelous time playing Frank Renda.  His name might not be familiar to you but back in the 70’s if there was a crime/Mafia movie then Al Lettieri was in it.  His most famous roles were in the Sam Peckinpah version of “The Getaway” and he played Sollozzo, the only guy with the cojones to order a hit on Don Vito Corleone in “The Godfather” He was a guy who actually hung around and partied with Real Life criminals and mob guys.  It was that experience that he brought to the screen in the many roles he played, usually as a mob guy.

Linda Cristal is very good here as Nancy Chavez who eventually becomes Majestyk’s girlfriend.  They had a scene in a bar that is so refreshingly honest about how people actually decide to go to bed that I felt like cheering.  Sometimes it’s not all heart-shaped boxes of flowers and serenades under the balcony.  Sometimes people have a couple of drinks in a bar and say: “Hey, wouldn’t it be a good idea if we…”  And I can’t close out this review without mentioning Mr. Majestyk’s yellow Ford pickup truck that does such remarkable stunts in the final chase scene that it should be a member of The Stuntmen’s Association of Motion Pictures.

So should you see MR. MAJESTYK?  Totally.  If you’re a fan of Charles Bronson, of Elmore Leonard, of tight well-plotted, well-written crime thrillers then this is a movie that you’re going to love.  And in terms of acting, you won’t be disappointed.  MR. MAJESTYK is one of Charles Bronson’s best movies and one well worth seeing.  If you have Turner Classic Movies you can wait for it to show up there.  But if you’re subscribed to Netflix, put it on your list next time you’re looking for a satisfying action flick.  You’ll like it.  Trust me.

103 minutes

Rated: PG